Food made him happiest if he experienced it in a purely emotional way. It might be the company, the moment, or some memory it evoked: of his mother’s grilled-cheese sandwiches, or his mother-in-law’s meatloaf. A plate of piss-poor peasant food could become something sublime, like feijoada in Brazil.

This morning, in Paris, reading Liu Xia’s “One Bird and Then Another:”

One Sunday, the sky was overcast, but it wasn’t raining. We went out together and you bought me a blouse from a boutique. When it got dark, we went to a crowded restaurant and each ate two bowls of dumplings. On the way back we were quiet, not saying a word, feeling slightly uneasy.